The Jeffrey Dahmer Victim Who Did Not Have To Die

My interest in certain cases continues long after the headlines cease. Such is the case surrounding Jeffrey Dahmer. His name is no doubt familiar to everyone reading this. His despicable mass murders, depraved mind, and his subsequent death at the hands of another prisoner, are general knowledge. However, there is something else about the case that stays with me, and it has to do with how his youngest victim met his death because of the homophobic and national origin bigotry of two Milwaukee Police Department officers.

Fourteen year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone did not have to die.

Konerak Sinthasomphone

Konerak Sinthasomphone’s family left the Nonkai refugee resettlement camp in Thailand, and came to Milwaukee, Wisconsin when Konerak was 3-years old. On May 26, 1991 when he was 14-years old, Konerak was playing soccer when Jeffrey Dahmer approached him. Dahmer offered him money to come to his apartment to pose for Polaroid pictures. Konerak was reluctant, but changed his mind.

According to Konerak’s family, Konerak would not have recognized Dahmer as the man who, in 1988, was convicted of drugging and sexually fondling his then 13-year old brother.

“We never saw him. Police officers told us they were going to put him away for good,“ said Anoukone Sinthasomphone. “We never thought he was going to be out.“

The family was so convinced of what they were told by the police that they never went to court when Dahmer was tried and sentenced to 1 year of work release and 5 years of probation.

Three years later, and while on probation, Dahmer would visit grief upon the Sinthasomphone family again.

In Dahmer’s apartment, Konerak posed for two photos in his underwear. According to Dahmer, he drugged Konerak with sleeping pills and while unconscious, he performed oral sex on him, then drilled a single hole in Konerak’s skull and injected muriatic acid into his frontal lobe. Dahmer was experimenting to see if he could render his victims into passive submission, and he was so confident in this that after injecting muriatic acid into Konerak’s brain, he left his apartment to go to a local bar.

Somehow, Konerak found his way out of Dahmer’s apartment and butt-naked, was found by Sandra Smith and Nicole Childress, both 17. They called the police. Konerak appeared drugged, confused and was bleeding from his rectum. He was not coherent to talk. Sandra and Nicole knew Konerak from the neighborhood. They knew something was wrong. While waiting for the police to arrive, Dahmer returned from the bar. He tried to convince Sandra and Nicole that Konerak was his lover and he took Konerak’s arm to take him back to his apartment. The two 17-year olds intervened and would not allow Dahmer to take Konerak.

John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish

Milwaukee Police Officers John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish arrived. Dahmer told them that Konerak was his 19-year old boyfriend who had drank too much following a quarrel.

Sandra and Nicole told the police that Konerak was a child, was bleeding, and that he had struggled against Dahmer’s attempts to walk him to his apartment.

Sandra and Nicole were told by the officers to “butt out,” “shut the hell up,” that it was a domestic incident, and threatened them with arrest for interfering.

Officers Balcerzak and Gabrish covered Konerak with a towel, and at Dahmer’s offer of giving them proof that Konerak was his lover, they escorted Konerak back to Dahmer’s apartment. Dahmer showed the officers the two Polaroid photos he had taken of Konerak in his underwear. Leaving Dahmer’s apartment after seeing proof that they were lovers, the officers remarked to Dahmer to “take good care” of Konerak.

After the officers left, Dahmer injected more muriatic acid into Konerak’s brain. It was fatal. According to Dahmer, he took off work the next day to devote himself to dismembering the bodies of Konerak and that of 31-year-old Tony Hughes, who he had killed 3 days earlier, and whose dead body was laying on the bedroom floor of Dahmer’s apartment when the police were there. Dahmer retained both victims’ skulls.

Had Officers John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish checked Dahmer for identification and conducted a background check, they would have found that Dahmer was a convicted child molester on probation. Not only did Balcerzak and Gabrish not check Dahmer for identification, they neither asked Dahmer if he had Konerak’s identification in his apartment.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s known victims.

After Dahmer’s arrest and the discovery of Konerak’s skull in his apartment, the story was widely publicized and an audiotape was released of officers Balcerzak and Gabrish making homophobic statements to their dispatcher and cracking jokes about having reunited “lovers.” The officers defended their decision to take Konerak to Dahmer’s apartment, saying that Konerak did not speak English. That angered Konerak’s family who said that Konerak spoke perfect English, having come to this country as a 3-year old. They also said that it should have been apparent to the officers that Konerak was not 19-years old.

Balcerzak and Gabrish were terminated, and took their termination to court where a judge reinstated them. John Balcerzak went on to serve as president of the Milwaukee Police Association from 2005 to 2009. He later opened a tavern. Gabrish was hired as a police officer in suburban Grafton, Wisconsin.

The story didn’t end there. The Sinthasomphone’s filed suit against the City of Milwaukee. Some readers might have heard it said that the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the purpose of the Constitution is to protect the people from the State, not to ensure that the State protects them from each other. In other words, the government cannot be sued for failure to protect citizens from citizens.

That doctrine was reaffirmed in the case DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services, (1989). I came upon comments during the Zimmerman case where people used that to say that the Sanford Police Department had no duty to protect Trayvon Martin from George Zimmerman. That debate centered on the dispatcher telling Zimmerman, “We don’t need you to do that” in response to Zimmerman answering that he was following Trayvon.

In 1992, Chief Judge Terence T. Evans of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, in the case of The Estate of Konerak Sinthasomphone v. The City of Milwaukee, left no stone unturned in analyzing that doctrine. The City of Milwaukee used that doctrine in effort to have the Sinthasomphone case dismissed on the doctrine of failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted. In other words, the City of Milwaukee claimed that the allegations were true, but there is no law to give the Sinthasomphone’s redress.

Judge Evans explained that the Sinthasomphone plaintiffs were not merely alleging that the police officers failed to protect Konerak from Jeffrey Dahmer, but that they actively prevented private citizens from helping him, and in fact, delivered Konerak, who was a minor, not to his parents, but into Dahmer’s custody. Chief Judge Evans wrote:

“The police left him with Dahmer despite the persistent attempts of private citizens to urge them to investigate further. One of the officers assured a concerned private citizen, who later called the police station, that everything was under control. In other words, the allegations are not just of police inaction, but of police action, action which violated Konerak Sinthasomphone’s substantive due process rights. I find that a claim is stated on this basis alone.”

Judge Evans established the difference between police inaction, and police action. The case proceeded. A few days before trial was to begin, the City of Milwaukee agreed to pay $850,000 to the Sinthasomphone family. In April 1995, Deputy City Attorney Rudolph M. Konrad said that the settlement was a way to avoid the trauma of replaying Dahmer’s crimes.

When the case was settled, Jeffrey Dahmer was dead, having been beaten to death on November 28,1994.

In July 2011, the Wisconsin Gazette published an article titled, “Dahmer Case Changed Police Relations.” It reports about some Milwaukee police officers who came out of the closet after the Dahmer case, and how it led to positive reforms in the police dealing with the LGBT community.

Xena, Good morning! Agreed, but could it be that we only look to history to confirm preconceived opinions in some cases? I would not apply this to the current article, but it is possible it does apply to some writings by some authors with a bias to sway public opinion. No, that was not intended to include you or necessarily anyone in particular.

I am so grateful for the two kids who acted to protect Konerak. Although their efforts did not save him, they are a light.

And I am frustrated, so frustrated, by narratives I see discharging police from all responsibility. They exist to protect us, not themselves. When they fail to protect–and indeed are part of destruction–responsibility is the only way to ensure the failure is individual, not systemic.

Have you read the book Blink? The last chapter addresses ways that police forces can and should change. It could only touch on a small amount of data, but it was compelling nevertheless.

(I wrote a post on how social media has the potential to change policing, but I quickly–???–made it private. This confirms I need to return it to public.)

Good morning Deborah! I’ve not read the book Blink but I’ll look for it now that you’ve asked. Oh no — please take that post off private. We need all the recommendations we can get in order to help this problem.

When the subject is controversial, and if you spend time on social media other than blogs and read mean-spirited comments, it can cause that urge to make certain posts private. I can’t say that is what you thought, but I know that I’ve turned off comments to some older posts because of trolls.

Deborah,
I endured many filthy, defaming, and threatening comments for years. I never approved the comments for public posting. Many of the comments were filled with mocking and demeaning intended to discourage me from writing. Bullies first try to re-define their target victims. Know that your readers and blog participants respect you, and the trolls and harassers are not your blogging friends and supporters and never will be.

Hey Mothman! Let’s see if I can breakdown my first lesson for today based on the first link.
1. If a person is bleeding, then there’s a possibility that they are physically injured.
2. If a person is drunk, and has had a quarrel and left the residence, then there’s a possibility they do not want to be in the presence of the person they quarreled with.
3. If a person is drunk, has had a quarrel and left the residence naked, and is bleeding, then there’s the possibility that they are in danger and should not be returned to the residence with the person they quarreled with.

Actually, the assumption that they are drunk should not supersede the fact that they are bleeding.

Xena, My posting of those links was not intended as a lesson. It was merely a little thought as to how and why people form their opinions and why sometimes those opinions don’t mesh with reality. In your example, IMO you are 100% correct, however I feel sure someone could argue the opposite as is often the case in life.

A confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias that involves favoring information that confirms previously existing beliefs or biases.

So, Jeffrey Dahmer took advantage of confirmation biases by telling the police he and Konerak were lovers, making them gay lovers, relying on the officers to then construe what they physically saw to be associated with the behavior of homosexuals in which they were already biased? That MIGHT have also concluded that a 19-year old gay “lover” would physically appear as a kid, which would have been Dahmer’s attraction????

Xena, I would again have to agree that you are correct. In life we, if we are objective, we must admit that we will often see things with a bias that conforms to our own logic, and it is obvious that the officers in that instance did just that. Could it be that the two officers did that act by intent, or simply by neglect of the facts posed to them?

Could it be that the two officers did that act by intent, or simply by neglect of the facts posed to them?

Mothman, based on the available information, I don’t think their intent was in bad-faith until they (1) listened to Dahmer and (2) told the two girls to shut up or they would be arrested. What he said to them played into their biases and he offered them proof — proof of his own plan and creation.

Thanks for your excellent article, Xena. I agree with your point about

However, there is something else about the case that stays with me, and it has to do with how his youngest victim met his death because of the homophobic and national origin bigotry of two Milwaukee Police Department officers.

I think the officers’ bias against gays led them to allow Konerac to be placed back in a dangerous situation and not care about his safety nor welfare.

Leaving Dahmer’s apartment after seeing proof that they were lovers, the officers remarked to Dahmer to “take good care” of Konerak.

“Take good care of” takes on a sinister implication because the officers already knew from the two private citizens and from Dahmer’s own words that Konerac was bleeding, had struggled against and escaped Dammer, and that there had been a “quarrel.”

Good morning Yahtzee! “Sinister” is right. It was almost like approving getting a virgin drunk so she cannot resist sex, and after taking advantage of her, doing it again until she gets used to being RAPED.

Awesome read, tragic story yet this is another Example of how Police officers elect themselves as prosecutors and judges. the duty of a police officer is to look for probable cause and if its found to make an arrest nothing more.
This means they set aside their personal beliefs or opinions and allow the judicial system to do their jobs.

I am starting to believe we need a Federal Public Servant act that prohibits officers or any public servant from being allowed to conceal the facts of cases they are suspected of wrong doing this means for example if an officer is involved in a shooting and the evidence is not clear that it was justified that the officer must stand trial and it must be made public.

No side stepping with these secret grand juries in which we don’t know if they really took place or not. in addition if there is an officer involved incident and its not clearly justified from the outset there should be no fund raising for these officers as they have a Union and a Union attorney that will represent them and if they cant afford an attorney like any other citizen they will be provided one.

Change needs to happen with this system that is intact right now, and the change that is needed is to treat these rouge cops as any other accused would be treated this means if a crime is suspected they get arrested booked and arraigned none of this reaching out to the media Non sense that allows them to basically set forth a narrative that will fit their defense.

This means they set aside their personal beliefs or opinions and allow the judicial system to do their jobs.

That would be impossible because they are human. They can never be completely without biases, but what they can do is follow proper procedure. For example, if they see someone who is naked, incoherent and bleeding, don’t take another person’s word for why — get them to a hospital.

Excellent post on all levels. None of them had to die ,especially Konerak. It’s so obvious that Konerak was a minor. This is not only anti gay it’s racism due to him being non white. Also to many times black and non white victims of crime will suddenly become adults. If those cops had done their jobs Konerak and others would have been alive. The good news was in the end Jeffrey Dahmer and another racist killer named Jesse Anderson would be killed in prison by Christopher Scarver. Dahmer and Anderson killed by the very person they targeted. Anderson killed his wife,stabbed himself and blamed 3black men. Dahmer had to drug up black men as well as Konerak. It just shows how victimizers aren’t so tough without an obvious advantage.

If those cops had done their jobs Konerak and others would have been alive.

Indeed! Dahmer killed four others after Konerak. After Dahmer was finally captured, the officers who gave Dahmer custody of Konerak said the apartment has a funny smell but they didn’t take time to investigate. The funny smell was a 3-day old body in the bedroom.

Thanks for the info about Anderson. I knew Scarver killed him, but didn’t know Anderson’s conviction that landed him in prison. Do you remember the man out East who had a similar story about a Black man killing his pregnant wife? If I remember correctly, the husband ended up jumping off a bridge after he became a suspect.

Hey Two sides! Dahmer and Gacy were absolutely evil. They rendered their victims unable to defend themselves by drugging them. Also, because their victims were male, families reporting them missing were disregarded by the police. Konerak’s family reported a 14-year old missing, while the police, based on Dahmer’s lie, had a police report about a 19-year old gay man found drunk.

Hi Jacqueline! I thought that I had subscribed to your youtube channel just after you announced opening it. I’ve watched a couple of your videos but only partially because of their length. You do excellent work and have such a kind heart of wisdom.

The trouble, it seems to me is, the further away we get from oppressive dictatorship and the malfeasance the populace suffers, the shorter the memory of that suffering gets and with it goes the fear that propels the public to be on guard against the creep of authoritarianism that lays the foundation for its return.

Over time people have become complacent and trusting of government officials, to the point where they overlook the threats that, various administrative actions portend and impact our rights. The public gathers the view that “that could never happen here.” While, in the early stages, it probably couldn’t, over time rights are slowly but surely eviscerated, eventually we arrive at a point where the state has all the powers it needs to impose upon us and lacks only a leader with enough gumption to advantage themselves of the maturing paradigm.

I’m surprised at the S.C. ruling because the police are required to enforce the law. The laws they are required to enforce are to protect the lives and property of the citizens. On top of which; when police suspect a crime or crimes, they have the power and are required to investigate. Certainly, when a non-responsive or incoherent person presents under odd circumstances, the police duty to investigate further kicks in! Police assert the power to take people into “protective custody”, yet the court would have you believe that this is not being done to protect the subject from harm by another citizen. It’s ludicrous in the extreme, and so I’m given to wonder how the argument before the S.C. was made since it smacks of incompetence. Ah well, I could go on and on about this for days, probably even weeks were I to dig in, but I think what I’ve said is sufficient to frame the debate.

Lonnie,
It has occurred to me that there is presently a younger generation of activists and advocates who think that previous Movements for civil rights were wrong and didn’t get the job done. They are living in the present, but lack knowledge of the experience of those in the past and particularly, how Movements in the past had knowledge of court cases and the trickle down of how those cases could make or break cases in the future. I’m not sure if it’s being complacent, or just ignorance, (and I don’t use that to be condescending but as a lack of knowledge.)

Okay, I see that my “shorthand” didn’t go over as well as I’d hoped, so now that I’ve got more time, here’s the “longhand”.

When I put the problems down to “complacency and/or ignorance” I mean to say that: some people are ignorant, some are complacent, while some are both. But that it is some mixture of these two elements that helps get us to this point.

First let me say that by neither term, ignorance nor complacency, am I denigrating anyone but those who are willfully so. We are all born ignorant and will be so in many areas, even unto the grave. While any adult, who lives in the real world, knows that “complacency” comes with having to select among the many “critical” subjects, that present, to focus attention on, while struggling to provide for the family and otherwise make end meet.

While I appreciate that many youths of today “get it” and align with advocates, if not become advocates themselves, it is because of the lack of firsthand knowledge of the experience of living under dictatorship(s), that the sense of urgency about individual rights is largely diminished from what it was, in times closer to those experiences. For example, it has been over two hundred years since, citizens like you and me, have had to feed and quarter soldiers as the law of the land. It has been nearly as long since we’ve had to watch what we say, very carefully, to preserve our employment and stations in life. Unfortunately that is coming back and there are too many who are not alarmed by it, simply because they are told it’s a critical exigency of government, in the war on terror and against the “conspiracy theorists”.

In short, we do not fight for our rights today, with the same unity and purpose as earlier generations once did, because we have enjoyed these rights for so long, we find it hard to envision them ever going completely away. When pre-war Germany is mentioned, many tend to think that Hitler came to power in a government that was already, largely, a dictatorship, when nothing is further from the truth. Germany had a democracy before a popular madman was handed the powers of state, who then used those powers to suppress opposition and sweep all rights away.

So when I look at what has been happening here in the good ol’ US of A, I become increasingly concerned. We’ve had the assassination of a President go by, without a serious investigation, where many questions are answered with jingoistic phrases, designed to silence inquiry, rather than seek answers. The outrageous attacks on those who question authority as “conspiracy theorists”, the undoing of our educational systems, the suppression of voters, the destruction of evidence in a national crime scene, the placement of blame without supportive evidence, with people being told to believe the impossible, to name just a few very concerning things.

All of which brings us to a point in time, where we could very well have some madman get power, declare martial law and do whatever they wanted under the guise of threadbare claims of national security exigencies.

When it comes to our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we should all be on the same page and not allow these many transgressions that have taken place. Instead we are divided into a “rainbow” of groups, covering the spectrum from “patriotic duty” all the way to criminal misadventure and every hue in between. Paving the way for some lunatic to come to power on the wings of populist rhetoric, establish their secret police to suppress dissent and take the nation to war in some misguided notion of conquering the world.

We seem to have dodged the bullet this time, where the powers that be, instead of selecting a madman as their champion, the got a clown instead. Yet democracy is “out of the barn” now, we must not lock the doors while there’s still a chance to get it back.

When I first read that, it caused me to think about the movie “The Book of Eli.”
A post-apocalyptic movie, only the older people could read.

I haven’t watched the educational systems as close as I’ve watched the younger generation decline in the areas of reading comprehension and writing. What is worst, is that their parents either trusted the system to properly educate their children, or were/are unable to teach their children because of their own educational shortcomings.

In the mid to late 60’s, people were encouraged to get a high school diploma to qualify for a decent paying job. It was also encouraged so that people could understand business documents in their general course of living and purchasing property, signing a lease, financing a car, balancing a checkbook, etc.

By the mid 70’s, people were encouraged to earn a two-year college degree. Employers were paying more to people with that degree for doing the same jobs as those without the degree.

Then, equal pay for equal work became a movement, and by the early 90’s, people were encouraged to earn a 4-year college degree. Those who wanted to go into business were encouraged to earn a MBA.

Then with computers came banks who hired anyone with a college degree and trained them to program in Fortran and Cobol. On the job training for computer programming came to an end around the late 90’s as colleges began to teach computer science.

What am I saying? The conditions of increasing education to qualify for employment was intended to disqualify certain groups of people. As those groups earned higher education, the goal post was moved. With the moving of the goal post, the younger generation became complacent about education. They fail to see how education is important in their daily lives and only think of it as qualifying them for employment. As we know, the employment situation in America has become either service jobs, or those who create the businesses that use service jobs.

Why do they need a good education to flip burgers or work at a phone center? The real question should be, why do they need a good education to understand political structure; to understand how legislation is made; to understand how to read prescription inserts and instructions?

Yep, just as you say the world moved under our feet. We had good public school educations, we expected that wouldn’t change much over time, we were wrong. We moved to two income families, leaving less time and energy to do as much at home as we probably should have. But there’s a limit to the number of hours in a day, and the amount of human energy, even as the number of tasks we had to perform continued to grow. Then outsourcing pulled the rug out from under our prosperity and boom, corporations began eating our legislative powers for lunch. Corporations, which are not people, got the rights of people and money became the gatekeeper to public office, not votes.

Until we can get away from big money, well financed, big media supported candidates and somehow get out the vote for real representative statesmen/women our officials will continue to be selected rather than elected. I’ve taken to watching West Wing on Netflix, and remembering when was the last time I saw a candidate or office holder who wasn’t some kind of corporate “no integrity needed” puppet. It very well appears that we will have to crash and burn, before we can turn things around. Hopefully not, but it sure seems that way.

Lonnie,
Yes. As you say, the world moved under our feet. The majority, meaning non-minorities, did not see the underlying intentions and went with the flow. The same is true for what is now the norm with two-income households. I saw that coming in the 70’s after attending 2 meetings with a women’s movement, where among other things, I saw that the movement came about because of the Viet Nam war. If men returned home, they were unable to provide the house in the suburbs with the white picket fence and two cars. Women were not giving up on that dream. The struggle of the non-minority woman was not the struggle of the minority woman, who have always worked, even if it was cleaning houses.

We can take a look back at the Viet Nam generation and see the trickle-down of family and social ills that placed the next generation into needing more from business and the government, such as licensed day care providers. They have replaced grandparents.

Regarding political candidates who would be real representatives, do any exist?

That is the 64,000 dollar question! We need statesmen very badly, but that alone may not be enough. Today’s political environment is vastly different from anything the world has ever seen before. We have a vast and very powerful Military Industrial Complex, Business Industrial/Military complex, and an educational industrial/military/business/prison complex. With a CIA agency that is clearly above the law and more and more people in these complexes are so advantaged as to be above the law in many ways.

With all these new schemes and alliances that allow so many to evade accountability, the nation is rotting from the inside out. Of course, those holding privilege don’t see it that way, all they see is the advantages and the fruits they get thereby. They do not stop to think of what the consequences of their actions are doing to the nation as a whole. But, at some point the law will lose sufficient credibility to allow the nation to descend to “survival of the fittest”. Trouble is, long before that happens, as government becomes weaker and weaker, foreign nations will move in to pick us over. In Roman times corruption allowed the military to grow so fat that, they had to hire mercenaries to defend Rome. When the mercenaries realized how powerful they were, and how powerless Rome was, they simply took over themselves. Unfortunately, they had no idea how to govern, so it was a Pyrrhic victory where everything fell into shambles.

The national cohesion we need is being jettisoned by people enamored of private profits, but, none of the people who are profiting greatly, are people who will pick up the guns in a time of crisis. They rely on the very people they’re crushing, to do that kind of work for them. It will not end well if these trends are not turned around.